Page:The Reminiscences of Carl Schurz (Volume One).djvu/423

 untiring that it frequently embarrassed me. They constantly were looking for something that they could do to please me. At the time when I was thinking of settling down in London it was hard work for me to induce them to accept my declination when they uttered the wish that I should live in their house. Now I had at least to consent to their pressing proposition that my youngest sister should come over from Germany to be educated in their home, like a child of the family. This turned out happily, as my sister was also blessed with that cheerful Rhenish temperament that radiates sunshine. Then Frau Kinkel insisted upon giving me further lessons upon the piano, and I resumed my musical studies with renewed zest. My teacher taught me fully to appreciate Beethoven, Schubert, and Schumann, and conducted me through the enchanted gardens of Chopin. But more than that, she familiarized me with the rules and spirit of thorough-bass and thereby opened to me a knowledge which in the course of time I learned to value as an enrichment of musical enjoyment. Then she put at my disposal her Erard grand piano, which was reverenced in the family like a sacred thing, and upon which, aside from herself, I was the only one privileged to practice and to improvise, although there was, for such things, another instrument of less value in the house.

The Kinkels, naturally, introduced me also in the social circles which were open to them. Of course my ignorance of the English language I felt as a great drawback. But I had the good fortune of establishing relations of something like friendship with several English families in which German or French was spoken. There I learned to understand how much sincere warmth of feeling there may be hidden in English men and women who often appear cold, stiff and formal. I was soon made to feel that every word of friendly sympathy